Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. That is true.

Mr. DODD. I will take 30 additional seconds. Can't we find 5 minutes this week to come to an agreement on the Snowe amendment and the Dodd amendment and move on to the next issue? Do we really have to make this a huge battle and fight, where we go through a battle to say, no to one, yes to another, maybe tomorrow. This is not fair to the American public. They expect I think a little more from us than this. Mr. President, I will try one more time--one more time, the sixth time.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let's make that 8 minutes; let me know in 8 minutes so my colleague from Nevada and anyone else can be heard on this. I don't think I need that much time. Regarding this issue of clinical trials and the issue that has been raised by Senator Snowe dealing with breast cancer, I guess you could divide the country into two groups. There are those who have had to deal with someone in their family who was dying or was threatened with death because of a serious illness, and those who have not been through it yet. You will; whether it is someone in your own family or a neighbor, someone you feel deeply about. Then you will understand, if you are not in the latter category, what my amendment tries to do. That is why I think it is so outrageous that on five different occasions in the last 2 hours, an effort to join together the Snowe amendment with the Dodd amendment has been objected to. It is incredible to me that we are in the Senate dealing with two issues that cry out for a solution dealing with breast cancer and how women are treated by HMOs and hospitals and the right to get a clinical trial if you are dying. On five occasions in the last hour, a unanimous consent request has been made that would allow these two amendments to be joined, and I suggest be agreed to unanimously. And on five different occasions objection has been heard. Someone may think they are scoring a political point here. Try to explain that to the people in the waiting room at a hospital in any State in the country at this very hour. Try to explain that to a family member who is looking at someone in a bed who is plugged into about 50 tubes. The doctors said: Look, there is only one way your husband, your wife, your child is going to survive and that is if you get into a clinical trial. That is it. And at 1:05 on this day, the 14th of July, we have a chance to do something about it and we are not going to do it because of gamesmanship, because someone may score a point. Instead of taking these two amendments and doing what any reasonable American would ask us to do--not Democrat, Republican, conservative, or liberal--we are not going to do it. Explain it to someone who says my family member needs clinical trials; my family member needs to get that breast cancer treated. I have listened today to the most incredible arguments against this clinical trial amendment. I wouldn't mind if there were questions about facts, but it is just not factual. We limit clinical trials. Let me tell you how we do it. There are five conditions you must meet before you can qualify for a clinical trial. Only those clinical trials sponsored by NIH, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans' Administration qualify. That is No. 1. No. 2, there is no other standard treatment available anywhere in America for you. If there is, you do not get into the clinical trial. I am glad my colleague from Tennessee is here because he raised these issues earlier. If there is another standard procedure available to you, you do not get the clinical trial under my amendment. No. 3, you have to be suffering from a life-threatening or serious illness. No. 4, you have to have the potential to benefit from the trial that would be covered. Last, you only get routine costs. My colleague from Tennessee said if you are going to get a heart, it is going to cost you a lot more because that is expensive. This amendment says no, no, no; only the routine costs are compensated by the HMO, not the device, not the prescription drugs--only the routine costs, under my amendment. I beg the leadership on the majority side, let us take the Snowe amendment and take the Dodd amendment, if you will, on clinical trials, and let's move on to the next issue and say to the American public on this question we agree. Ironically, the trade association for the HMOs agrees. They have sent out bulletins saying to their own HMOs: We think you ought to have clinical trials and make them available to people. How ironic that we are about to vote down the right to have clinical trials which the HMOs think they ought to have. I gather an amendment will be offered. ``Wait until tomorrow. There will be an amendment tomorrow.'' Let me predict what the amendment will do. It will provide clinical trials for cancer. You tell that to someone who has AIDS or someone who has Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. You tell that family: I am sorry, we think clinical trials are OK for cancer but not OK for the other illnesses. What is the logic in that? I think we have narrowed this pretty well. You limit it to NIH, Department of Defense, Veterans'; no other standard treatment is available in the country; you have to be dying; and it has to be able to treat the covered problem you have, and you only pay for routine costs, not for the devices or the equipment. I am preaching to the choir when I talk to my colleague from Maine. She has written a good bill. I mentioned it earlier. Senator Mack has been on this bill, Senator Rockefeller, others have been involved on a bipartisan basis. So my appeal in the last remaining minutes of this debate on this amendment is that we drop the objections, the five objections that have been raised. The costs on this are negligible. The estimates are 12 cents per covered patient per month--12 cents. In fact, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute and the M.D. Anderson Center, two of the finest in the world, in their report stated that they believe the costs are lower for the clinical trials than for the other procedures--actually a lower cost. So you have Sloan-Kettering and M.D. Anderson lowering costs of clinical trials on their analysis of our amendment. Lower costs, 12 cents a month, you pick it. We have narrowed it tightly so you limit it, as limited as I know how to make it, to life threatening, no other standard procedure available to you. You have to use one of the only three, clinical trials sponsored by NIH, Department of Defense, Veterans'. How much more narrow can we get? There is only one of three or four ways that we get new products out to people. You test it in a lab first. Then you give it to animals. Then you have to have clinical trials. You have to have them. If you do not have the clinical trials, then you cannot get the product to people. So it is not just the patient today who needs it, who is lying somewhere wondering whether or not they can get their HMO to include a clinical trial, but future patients. If we do not have the clinical trials today, that future patient will not get that medicine or may be delayed in getting it. Mr. President, there may be other issues which divide us. This one should not. This one should not divide us. Can we not, for 5 minutes-- --

Mr. DODD. To withdraw my amendment.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, am I allowed to withdraw my amendment?

Mr. DODD. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield, I gather it is not just her voice but obviously other voices here--the leadership. May I interpret that to mean that if I were to offer my clinical trials amendment as a freestanding proposal, I would then have her support of that proposal so we are not asking ourselves to make a choice between two items we like, and instead of adding one to another, we are substituting one for another; therefore, being put in a terrible parliamentary situation, unnecessarily, in my view. I am fearful if I offer my clinical trials amendment freestanding as to whether or not I will be able to have the Senator's support on that, maybe even as a cosponsor.

Mr. DODD. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DODD. I would take the amendment of the Senator from Maine, with all due respect to my colleague from Virginia.

Mr. DODD. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, before my colleague from Maine sits down, I know she cares about the clinical trials issue. She has one of the best bills on clinical trials, of which I am a supporter. What I have offered incorporates some of her ideas, some of Senator Mack's, and Senator Rockefeller's ideas with the clinical trials. I also agree with what my colleague from Maine is doing on mastectomies, on the breast cancer issue. I am perplexed a bit. We have a chance right now by taking the amendment of the Senator from Maine, of which I am supportive, and adding it to the clinical trials amendment, and we might just do something no one expects. We might actually do something in a bipartisan way on the Patients' Bill of Rights. I do not understand why there is such objection to that. If we agree with Senator Snowe and her amendment, if, by and large, we all agree on clinical trials, why does the Republican majority object to adding the Snowe amendment to the Dodd amendment, adopting both of them and moving on to the next amendment?

Mr. DODD. I ask my colleague----

Mr. DODD. We agree on the clinical trials. We can put them together and move on to the next issue. That is what I recommend.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if I may inquire of my colleague from Maine--I appreciate immensely what the Senator from Washington just said. It sounds to me what the Senator from Maine has offered is something with which I could certainly agree. I would add it to my amendment. There is no reason we ought to ask people to make a choice between a proposal dealing with breast cancer and a proposal dealing with clinical trials and prescription drugs. So I make a request that this be added to the clinical trials amendment so we could achieve the goals of both dealing with the clinical trials issue and the issue the Senator from Maine has raised. If it is appropriate, I ask unanimous consent the amendment by the Senator from Maine be added to the underlying Dodd amendment on clinical trials.

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield?

Mr. DODD. My question to my colleague and good friend from Tennessee is this: As we have written this amendment, there are two other conditions. It isn't just life-threatening or serious illness. There has to be no other standard, no other option available to the person other than the clinical trials. So that is one. And, two, there has to be a limited time. For instance, it can't just be someone who has cancer but in certain stages of cancer. So I appreciate his point that it can be pretty broad. But what we have done with our amendment is say that nothing else exists out there to possibly treat you, No. 1; and No. 2, it has to be done in a limited amount of time. He may want to respond to that.

Mr. DODD. On our time, yes.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 1 minute to ask a question.

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield?

Mr. DODD. I ask for 30 additional seconds. I ask unanimous consent-- this is the sixth time this will be made in the last hour--that S. 1344, the Daschle substitute amendment, be modified with language from the Snowe amendment No. 1241 prohibiting drive-through mastectomies and requiring coverage for second opinions be included in the Dodd amendment.

Christopher Dodd

Speeches

Manage analytics